About Schleich
History
The company, founded 80 years ago by Friedrich Schleich, Germany, is one of the largest toy manufacturers in Germany and a leading international provider of figurines. The famous figurines and play sets from Schleich are distributed in more than 50 countries and have triumphed in children’s rooms all over the world.
As a global player with Swabian roots, Schleich today achieves more than half of its sales outside its core market of Germany. The design of the Schleich play worlds, manufacture of the production tools and the quality and safety tests are all performed in Germany. Production itself takes place both at the company headquarters in Germany and in other production facilities outside of Germany.
What are Schleich products made of?
To put it simply Schleich are manufactured from a high quality, non-toxic PVC that passes the quality standards for the Australian/NZ toy industry as well as that of USA and Europe.
Since the founding of the company over 80 years ago, toy safety and the highest quality standards have been the utmost priority for the Schleich group.
The materials used are absolutely safe and are checked and approved regularly by independent test laboratories. Material suppliers are subject to strict controls by our quality assurance department.
Schleich products are made of various plastics and paints. These are carefully selected on the basis of the specific requirements. Among the most important plastics types we use are polyvinyl chloride (PVC), thermoplastic elastomers (TPE), actrylnitril butadiene styrene (ABS) and other typical plastics for toys.
Around the world, all items and materials used in the products meet applicable national and international toy requirements, such as the new European toy guideline 2009/48/EG, the DIN EN 71 and the international Toy Standards ASTM F963-2008.
How is a Schleich figurine created – from the idea to the figurine?
Schleich play worlds are expanded every year, being supplemented by new figures and sets. Their inspiration is taken from nature, the work they do together with international experts and their fans – the children.
It takes an average of three to four months from the design of a model to the finished Schleich figure. Across many different working stages, all characterised by a huge love of detail and the highest quality standards, the famous hand-painted Schleich figurines arise – unique in their fidelity to nature and coming alive in the children’s rooms of the world.
The ideas for the various products are produced within the company itself. Each new figurine initially takes its proverbial form in the product design department of Schleich. Through drawings, photographs and documents from specialist books, the designer gets down to work and with artistic craft, creating a monochrome wax model which already contains all the details of the later product.
Depending on the complexity of the figure, it takes two to eight working weeks before the wax figure bears up to the critical eye of its creator. For the body of a horse model, for instance, each individual hair will be applied. The finished artwork is finally handed over so it can be visually released by the marketing department, as well as being given over to the moulding and toolmaking department for technical and structural testing as part of quality assurance.
The resulting wax model is the precursor for the creation of the actual casting mould in the toolmaking department. There are currently around 600 of these valuable injection moulds, made from a zinc-aluminium-magnesium-copper mixture – each representing a different figurine from the enormous Schleich product family.
Each figure has its own base colour, whose formula is developed in-house from various pigment mixtures of PVC base material with different degrees of hardness. All production materials and materials are chemically tested beforehand. The plastic granules are heated until they melt and through a nozzle, they are injected into the mould in a liquid state.
After the machine production, the blanks require (depending on their size) about half an hour until they are completely hardened. Larger figurines take a cold-water bath. With smaller ones, intermediate storage on cold plates is sufficient.
Each individual piece is hand-painted. The only exceptions are large-scale patterns, such as the brown spots on a giraffe figure, which are applied in a pad-printing process.
Only then do the final figures get the famous Schleich flag with the red “S” hung around them, meaning they are ready for delivery.
Find out more here http://www.schleich-s.com/